Life is full of pitfalls and unfairness. The choices we make in order to deal with the
peaks and valleys of life determine whether we succeed or fail. They also determine
whether we will be good or bad. Whether wealthy or poor, those who seek to do their best
and refuse to be defeated by the disasters that come their way do survive, are usually
happy and often achieve greatness. Some blame everybody else around them, saying:
"Society is to blame. My parents are to blame. The government owes me a better
life." These are the ones who end up as failures. They end up in the electric chair
or face down in a gutter someplace.
When I heard of the mass murders in Littleton last month, one of the first things that
popped into my mind was a story I had read many times as a child. The story is from 1907
in a school in the country near Littleton, Colorado. It was in the country then. It would
be part of the Denver Metropolis today. It may even be near the spot of Columbine High
School.
The story is in the book, Little Britches, by Ralph Moody. The book was very
popular in the 1950's and won several awards. It remains popular to this day. The
University of Nebraska Press recently republished Moody’s Little Britches and
Moody’s other books. Little Britches is a book for both children and adults.
It was the first of a whole series of books that tell of the author’s adventures
growing up. The Little Britches Rodeos for kids got their name from his book, and I
believe Moody helped organize them.
Moody’s family moved from East Rochester, New Hampshire to a ranch near Littleton,
Colorado because of his father’s health problems. The dry air of Colorado was
supposed to be good for his lungs. The title Little Britches came about because
Moody would work on ranches as a child, and the cowboys gave him the nickname,
"Little Britches."
Living in the east, children had always dressed up in their finest clothes to go to
school; but in Colorado, boys wore overalls to school. When they started school in
Colorado, Ralph’s mother insisted that her children were going to wear proper clothes
to school. She gave further orders to Ralph that he was not to get in a fight. If he did,
he would get a good thrashing. She reminded him that the bible said, "Turn the other
cheek".
The one room school had one teacher and a grand total of 10 children, including Ralph
and his sister Grace. "Peer pressure" was alive and well. Ralph was instantly
considered an oddball because of wearing a suit. Ralph described what happened the very
first time they went out to recess.
[Mother] must have heard about Freddie Sprague. He was in the second grade, but he was
bigger and fatter than I. We hadn’t been out to recess a minute when Freddie put a
stick on my shoulder and then knocked it off. "Wanta Fight?" he said.
Grace was standing right behind him and hollered, "If you do, I’ll tell
Mother."
I knew she would, too, so I said, "No, my mother won’t let me."
I don’t know why the Bible picked out cheeks, but that’s right where Freddie
hit me. I wanted to hit him back, but I didn’t dare to. Mother could spank pretty
hard, if I did something right after she’d told me not to. I just let my hands stay
down and turned my face around. Freddie hit that side too, and he hit it hard.
When I started to cry, somebody sang out, "Molly, Molly." Then all the boys,
and even some of the girls, started yelling it. (Molly was his mother.)
This and other pranks went on for several weeks, making Ralph’s life miserable.
Not only was he beat up, but he was also made the brunt of all sorts of practical jokes
and teasing. One day after lunch, it got so bad that Ralph couldn’t take it anymore.
In Ralph’s words, this is what happened:
Freddie Sprague yanked at my pants so hard that one of the buttons flew off, and I had
to hold both hands to hold my pants up. Then he got dirty and yelled to the other kids,
"Let’s pull Molly’s pants off so he can squat like a girl." They did
and right there where all the girls could see.
I didn’t care whether Mother would be ashamed of me or not. I couldn’t be a
gentleman with my pants off, and I didn’t want to be one anyway. I plowed into
Freddie with both fists. I had the advantage, because he didn’t expect it. His nose
started bleeding before mine did and it made me sure I could lick him.
Ralph did lick him, and he was now part of the school. He and Freddie even became
friends. Neither boy was arrested or kicked out of school. Ralph even said that the
teacher "was peeking out the corner of the window, but didn’t ring the bell till
it was all over."
Ralph also got his spanking from his mother. However, the next day when he was working
with his father, out of the blue, his father asked, "I hear you had a fight at school
yesterday." Ralph said that he had. His father asked, "Did you lick him?"
Ralph said he had and his father replied, "Good." Nothing more was ever said
about the fight.
A year or two later, Ralph’s father died, leaving his mother with 6 children.
Somehow, she was able to keep the family together with no welfare check. Ralph, his mother
and the other children all found little jobs to make enough money to survive. Ralph worked
on ranches, in grocery stores and many other things to make a living. The rest of the
family did laundry and cooking for other people, as well as anything else they could come
up with that was an honest way to earn a buck.
When Ralph turned 21, he received a diary. He wrote in it that he "was going to
work as hard as I could, save fifty thousand dollars by the time I was fifty, and then
start writing." He kept that promise while being a good husband and father. The life
that he lived and the books he wrote telling his family’s stories have inspired the
thousands who have read them. Faith, family and hard work overcame problems that would
have overwhelmed many people. Instead of giving up, expecting others to support them,
blaming or trying to punish society, Ralph’s family remained loving happy people
during their adversity and overcame the obstacles that came their way.
While Ralph was writing his books and inspiring people during the 1950's, young Charley
Starkweather offered the stark contrast of someone that made the choice of the murderers
in Littleton, to blame others for what he perceived as a bad life. In reality, it offered
no obstacle as great as the Moody family overcame.
Charley grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska in a working class family that didn’t have a
lot of money, but always had food on the table. He wasn’t extremely smart and was
supposedly picked on in school. He often got into fights on the playground. He had a chip
on his shoulder that everybody was picking on him. He quit school at age 16 and worked in
a warehouse for awhile and then as a garbage man.
At age 19, he robbed a gas station and murdered the mechanic working there. The police
couldn’t figure out the crime so he was emboldened that crime was the way to fame and
fortune. Well, he got fame, but not fortune. A couple months later, he murdered the
parents and 3-year old sister of his 14-year old girlfriend, Carol Anne Fugate. The two of
them held Lincoln, the State of Nebraska and the entire country in a state of terror for a
couple months during the winter of 1957 and ‘58 as they went on a murder spree,
killing 9 people from Lincoln to Wyoming. In Wyoming, they were caught. By age 21, Charley
got his just reward in the electric chair in the Nebraska State Prison. Fugate was
sentenced to life in prison and was paroled in 1976.
Every day, people are faced with the same choices as Little Britches and Charley. It
has been that way since Eve partook of the fruit in the Garden of Eden. We all choose
poorly sometimes, but most of us don’t let evil consume our lives. We try our best to
be good. We don’t play the blame game, and we don’t think that we are owed
something.
There is a difference between the era when Little Britches grew up in Littleton and the
Trench Coat Mafia that roam the school halls of today’s Littleton. Instead of blaming
the people that do bad acts, a substantial part of society (and most of the opinion makers
that run our institutions) have accepted Charley Starkweather’s view of society and
rejected Little Britches.
The change was already taking place when Charley Starkweather went on his murder spree.
We can see it from the strategy taken by his defense lawyers. They tried to claim insanity
as a defense and then tried to blame society. This was the summation in the closing
argument by defense attorney, Clement Gaughan:
This boy is a product of our society. Our society that spawned this individual is
looking for a scapegoat. Carol Fugate should get the same punishment as this lad, and I
can tell you right now that she is never going to get the death penalty. His life, my
life, are almost parallels until our nineteenth birthday. I stand here and weep
unashamedly. I hated everybody and everything and I could lick anybody. Society treated me
exactly as it treated Charles Starkweather, but the good Lord gave me, possibly, a little
better parents.
I will take you to the death house so you can see him with his trousers cut to the
knees, with his arms bare, his head shaved, with electrodes attached. And when the switch
is pulled, you will see the electricity snap and the smoke come from his head, his hair
stand on end as the electricity goes through his body. You will see him jerk in the straps
and see him fall forward. This is your responsibility, not mine. Ladies and gentleman, I
ask you for the life of Charles Starkweather.
Fortunately, the 12 jurors still believed in self-responsibility and put the blame
where it belonged. They accepted the responsibility to pass judgment. The lawyer was right
about one thing. Many of us got in fights and had similar childhood experiences as Charley
did, but (like Gaughan and Little Britches) we don’t grow up to be mass murderers.
While good parents help, the absence of them is no excuse for evil acts.
Unfortunately, too much of society has followed the philosophy of Charley and his
lawyers. It is bad enough when an individual acts like Charley does, but it is even worse
when people of intelligence and leadership positions use the same pitiful pass-the-buck
argument. They believe that every ill in the world is the responsibility of everyone else,
and we must blame and punish innocent millions for individual acts of evil.
The grandiose evils of the world are the result of governments run by the ideological
brethren of Charley Starkweather. Hundreds of millions have lost their lives as a result
of the rejection of individual responsibility and the promotion of the idea that society
is to blame. Pass the buck. Destroy belief in God and family because they are the source
of all natural restraint on evil. Without these restraints, force rules.
We haven’t completely reached the point where we are run by Starkweather ideology
in this country, but we have came to a dead end in the road. Do we jump off the cliff into
the abyss of evil as Charley Starkweather or two members of the Trench coat Mafia did? Or,
do we do as Little Britches, his mother and brothers and sisters did when they were faced
with adversity -- turn away from the cliff and take the path of individual responsibility?
We make that decision over and over again in our own lives, day after day. We choose the
right path most of the time. We should demand the same for our government, schools and
churches rather than standing by while they help us jump off the cliff.
To Joe's
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